Jared Bouck is the driving force behind Sprout Board, an Arduino breakout board that lets you plug in a Duemilanove and a shield and provides a panel-mount set of screw terminals, all in a rack-mountable form factor. The prototype application for the SproutBoard is a DIY server room monitor that can be configured to provide remote temperature and humidity, motion, liquid water, smoke, room entry, and mains power monitoring. Local monitoring options include an LCD display and an audio alarm module. Jared’ll sell you the Sprout Board itself, in kit form, for $50, or a complete bare-bones server monitor with a fully assembled and tested Spout Board, an Arduino, an Ethernet Shield, a serial LCD display, a wall mount chassis, and a temperature/humidity sensor for $250, which is about 1/5th the price of a comparable commercial system.

Have you got a clever idea for an electronics kit that might be the next Sprout Board? Enter it in our ongoing Gadget Freak Design Contest! The grand prize–$1000 cash and a storefront in Makers Market–could be a great way to fund your start-up! The deadline is coming up on July 13, so get cracking!

I am descended from 5,000 generations of tool-using primates. Also, I went to college and stuff. I am a long-time contributor to MAKE magazine and makezine.com. My work has also appeared in ReadyMade, c’t – Magazin für Computertechnik, and The Wall Street Journal.

I’m building a room monitor with arduino/ethernet/serial LCD etc, at work because of the absurd prices of the commercial stuff. Great minds and all that, their parts list is hauntingly familiar.

But I was using a arduino prototype board for the connectors and was wondering how I was going to staple it to an equipment rack. (I was leaning towards using an actual pizza box, but that’s been done, so then I was considering duct tape and shapelock…)

Dang, that’s nice! I’m probably gonna get the board and chassis, and populate it with the stuff I already have.

-RG

rahere

A certain well-known Swedish knock-down furniture company with a blue-and-yellow logo produces a cubic occasional table whose legs are exactly the right distance apart for an impromptu equipment rack – your customisation comes in in the detailing. How about a steampunk shell? Or go back further to a mediaeval rack?